Five Reasons to be Cheerful for Aston Villa Fans as Clock Ticks on Lambert

I had a confident feeling about the Spurs game. The North Londoners weren’t as good as they have been in recent years and Villa’s shocking recent record against them surely couldn’t continue for much longer. Plus, despite the general moribund state of Lambert’s Villa they occasionally come up with big results. He can blame a seriously poor refereeing performance.

1. A goal

Lets begin by stating the obvious: Finally. A. Goal. It was a tidy finish from Weimann after some good work by N’Zogbia down the wing. I’ll just repeat that last bit for Paul Lambert, DOWN THE WING. Have width, will score, Paul.

2. The Beast was back…until he was gone again.

Benteke bullied the Spurs back-line, hit the post and got into decent goal-scoring positions and was getting his eye in. The flash point that led to his sending off is yet another example of the need for video replays on such incidents.

When someone sticks their head in your face, your reflex reaction is to push them away. It’s called self-defence. There wasn’t even a yellow card for the Spurs player who started it all by putting his head in Benteke’s face. That was a disgrace, after all it’s all about cause and effect.

Video evidence please. It’s time to take football out of the dark ages to prevent these frequent injustices that soil the game.

3. At least it was a gripping and entertaining game.

There haven’t been that many of those down Villa Park in recent times. Villa have been on the front foot in their last two games and this is the only way they are going to turn this tragic run of defeats around.

4. Bournemouth

The Cherries currently top the Championship at the moment (which was news to me, until I checked the table the other day, I thought they were in Division 1!). Better than them being league toppers for Villa fans though, is they’ve helped keep a lid on our noisy neighbours taking the mick out of Villa’s slump by hammering the Blues 8-0 and knocking West Brom out of the League Cup in the space of a week.

It’s a small mercy, but thanks to them all the same.

5. No More Excuses

We all know the numerous negative Villa club records Paul Lambert has collected during his time at Villa. When you’ve done it over three seasons, it’s hard to broker mitigation for such a sub-standard record. The performances have been dire too, regardless of the results.

Of course, only a board that thought appointing Alex McLeish was a good idea would hand Lambert a new four-year contract so soon, but now it’s up to Lambert to repay their blind faith.

From here on in it’s all about the results. Failure to pick up a win in the next three games against West Ham (a), Southampton (h) and Burnley (a) will see the pressure on the Villa boss seriously heat up. If he lost them all, to make it nine losses in a row, he’d have to go.

Over to you Paul.

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3 COMMENTS

cheaper to get rid of in May ? Cheaper than what ? Oh the new contract on the back of a successful start to Villa’s season !
A start coupled with no sale of the club that may ???? have changed Lerners tactics towards the club
But after what has happened since MON left does any fan realistically think that Lerner will be bullied into sacking Lambert before giving Fox time to work with him to produce some success out of failure ?
And I say that with the view that Lerner appointed McLeish to spite the Villa fans who were trying to bully him . And Lerner clearly stated that Lambert was working to his orders
Clearly things have changed with the appointment of Fox and the rare sight of Lerner at Goodison , but change needs time and Lambert has done as instructed and ensured survival for 2 seasons , but with Fox can he bring in the changes needed for success ?
Or will replacing him break the squad ?

Er, right – the last two.point,four years count for nothing if he gets something out of the next three games, but if he loses them as well he has to go. At the risk of stating the obvious, it would have been a lot easier and probably cheaper now to have got rid in May, as all sanity suggested at the time.

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My Old Man Said (MOMS) is an award-winning football blog & podcast. MOMS is also on the National Council of the Football Supporters Federation (FSF) and has been to Parliament, the Premier League offices and beyond in addressing supporter issues. UTV

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